Description: In the wake of an abusive relationship, Katniss Everdeen struggles to find her voice and her self-worth in the company of a certain blonde baker who deserves everything she's too broken to provide. Inspired by but loosely based on Bon Iver's "Skinny Love." Rated 'M' for lemons/adult themes/language. Everlark one-shot.

This idea has been floating around in the back of my mind for months now, and finally, I've had the time to put it into words. The topic itself is fairly heavy, dealing with abuse and other mature themes, so please be aware of that when reading. (It is rated 'M' for a reason.) This one-shot is anything but lighthearted, even if it does end on a hopeful note.

Quick shout-out to SFCBruce for ironing out the wrinkles in this tale! :)

*Also, this fic isn't very nice to Gale. At all. I don't personally have a vendetta against his character, but for this story I took some very drastic artistic liberties with him, so Gale fans… my deepest condolences.

Disclaimer: I own nothing pertaining to or surrounding the elements of the Hunger Games trilogy, or Bon Iver's 'Skinny Love.'

Skinny Love

Her love is almost as withered as she, starved for redemption, wilting to nothing but skin and bone when she meets him.

The boy is the sunlight to her rain, the smile to her grimace, the melody to her silence; he is everything she is not, and everything she was once before, and everything she wants to become again. He tells her his name, Peeta Mellark, and even the syllables sound like a warm blanket beside a fireplace. She wants to wrap herself in his voice, in him, to hopefully bring some heat to these arctic bones of hers. It's a sweltering afternoon in the crux of July, and she's still shivering. She's always shivering now.

She's standing inside the bakery she passes every day on her way to work—she's been entranced by the cozy fragrance of rising dough every time she's floated down this congested Manhattan street, unsure of what roped her into the place today of all days, but she's glad she came. She has nothing more than a few coins in her back pocket that'll probably not even be enough for a scone, but just drinking in the aroma of the place fills her empty belly. She's eyeing the cupcakes behind the glass when the boy—the man—with the floppy golden hair and sapphires for eyes aligns with her.

He stretches out a hand over the counter and introduces himself. She wonders if he does this with every customer.

She takes his large, calloused baker's hand in his and shakes it, the heat from his skin lacing around hers like ribbons of butter. She doesn't want to let go, and she's surprised when he's hesitant to pull away, too.

"I'm Katniss," she replies softly, and he smiles.

"What can I get for you today?"

She lifts a hand to motion to the strawberry danish in the corner of the display case, but she stops herself, her cheeks flaming a violent scarlet. "I'm just looking." She figures that's a safe response.

He cocks an eyebrow, and she finds herself accidentally tacking on, "I don't think I have enough money for any of this."

When she looks up to him, his wide blue orbs are raking her in, flooded with sympathy, which makes her stomach clench. She doesn't need pity. Not from him, not from anyone.

Without saying a word, his wide fingers clasp for a small square of wax paper, and he dips his hand inside the glass case, digits curling around the curve of the danish. He hands it to her with a bright smile colored over his lips, and despite the growling in her belly, she takes a step away.

"I don't need your charity," she tells him, a little more defensively than planned.

He surprises her by extending his arm further, lifting a golden brow. "It's not charity. It's a baker giving a pastry to a pretty girl."

Her eyes lower, her blush deepening. There's no way he thinks you're pretty, Katniss. She was skeletal, comprised of all sharp angles and harsh edges, her dark hair pulled into a disheveled braid, silver eyes sunken in, olive skin pallid, sallow, stretched in all the wrong places.

She tells him, "I can't repay you."

Shock pulses through her veins when she hears the boy counter this with a light chuckle; good-natured, yes, but certainly unexpected.

"How about you, Miss Katniss, come back to the bakery at five o'clock tomorrow evening so I can take you out? If you're so concerned with compensation, that'll do." She notices that when he smiles, a dimple caves into his left cheek, and she thinks it's adorable.

Her frail fingers cross as she presses her palm to her morbidly flat belly, her stomach rippling with hunger—for the pastry and the affection—but she shakes her head.

"I don't think you want to do that, Mr. Mellark. I've got too much baggage."

He responds before she even has time to blink. "Not to brag or anything, but I can lift a hundred-pound bag of flour. I think I can handle the baggage." His voice is buoyant, his smile unfaltering, blue eyes lacking even a hint of suspicion.

Understanding that the boy is impossibly persistent, she hesitantly opens her hands, and he gently sets the danish into her palms. She doesn't know what on earth would possess the baker to trust her and she wants to admit that he's made a horrible mistake. She's hardly someone he should dare to get involved with—not when she's in the state she is.

Yet, somehow, she finds herself curled up on a bench outside the bakery the following evening, wearing a knit cardigan to conceal her bony figure despite the heat swimming from the concrete. Not that she can feel it, anyway. It could be winter, for all she knew.

He's sporting a baby blue polo that has a streak of dried dough on the sleeve, and he has a bit of flour in his hair, and it makes her smile. It makes him real, genuine, and she can't remember the last time she experienced anything truly authentic.

He offers to take her to a restaurant, but once the anxiety flashes in her silver eyes—eating with him would exhibit just how starving she truly is, and she'll do anything to evade his sympathy—he quickly recovers and suggests they take a walk, which is easy enough. It's with activities as plain as this in which Katniss is in her element, because it's simple, and normal, and she'd give anything to revert back to simplicity and normality. She's been living in a whirlwind of pandemonium for months now, ever since her breakup—well, it truly started long before her breakup, but dissecting the petty details tears her apart all over again, so she tries to avoid thinking them over—and just taking a walk with the baker boy practically makes her feel human again.

She discovers almost immediately that she's fond of Peeta Mellark. He's easy to like, his smile is contagious; he is kind and intelligent and genuinely good and is probably a superhero in disguise. He distracts her for the evening, yanking her from the toxic thoughts that have been suffocating her for months, which is simple for him because he is nothing like her previous lover. He is gentle, talkative but still perceptive, and he makes her feel important. He is not violent, or sarcastic, or obsessed with holding power over the situation, over her. She wonders if he's even familiar with the feeling of anger. Probably not, she reckons.

She hardly speaks, allowing him to tell her all about him—his father owns the bakery, he wrestled in high school and college, he needs his shoelaces double-knotted, he loves the pale orange hue of a sunset—without giving him much information on herself. He asks her questions, but she consistently has either short or no answer to donate in response. She's boring. She's wasting away. She's tired all the time. What more is there to tell?

She considers their date—could it even be called that?—a success, and judging by his eagerness to plan a second outing with her, he must think so, too. But, although she doesn't reject him, she's hesitant to arrange another engagement. When they arrive at the bakery, over which rests a loft in which Peeta stays, she gives him her phone number and quickly pulls away. His fingers catch on her arm, however, and in the first insistent gesture he's made the entire evening, he brings her back to him so he can press a gentle kiss to her cheek.

When she walks away, she finds herself stunned by the kiss, by his behavior, by him… can he even be real? She can't remember a time in which a guy was genuinely interested in her, not what she had to offer physically. She hasn't received a kiss on the cheek in years. Hungry, possessive ones to her mouth, her throat, her breasts, but not something so innocent as what Peeta had given her.

When she returns to her measly excuse of an apartment, she curls up on the creaky mattress that lies crooked over her cluttered floor, bringing her knees to her chest and emptying her sobs into the comforter. She doesn't deserve Peeta. The blonde-hair, blue-eyed boy is literally a shard of sunshine, possibly a shooting star that magically landed in Manhattan. He is noble, benevolent, whole; she is worthless, wasted, broken. Her old lover had chewed her up for years before spitting her out again, leaving her crumpled and pathetic. Yet somehow, this golden boy waltzed into her life, presenting a new promise of hope that she had forgotten existed, and he deserved everything in the world, and she could give him nothing. She would break him, too, just as her old lover had shattered her.

She'd wasted her love on the man before and had none left to give Peeta.

He sends her a text message at twilight to bid her goodnight, and it causes her to sob all over again, because the last man had never once been so thoughtful. He'd yank down her pajama bottoms and force himself inside of her, and when he was finished, he'd shift away from her and fall asleep without so much as a single sentence. Sometimes, she'd be pathetic enough to tell him she loved him, and all he'd grunt back would be an irritated, "Yeah."

She falls asleep counting the times her old partner told her he loved her. It couldn't have been more than a dozen. She used to think it was the most romantic thing in the world when he did, that he only reserved it for their most intimate moments, but she recalls that the only time he'd say the words was after he'd left bruises on her arms or her thighs, or a splotchy red mark on her cheek. He'd hold her to him and promise that he loved her, that she was his girl, that he would be nothing if she left him. Those words had made her love him more, because she thought they were real. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she still wonders if they were.

She finds that, on her way to work, she can no longer pass the bakery without being drawn in through its doors. She never has the money to buy anything, and she refuses to accept the pastries Peeta tries to gift her; she goes specifically to see him. It's safest this way. She can make him happy without fully committing to a date and she can leave whenever she likes. Whenever she needs.

She never thought happiness could foster so much ache.

After several weeks have flown by, he invites her to a bar one night, and she accepts. She loves noisy venues because they drown out her thoughts and allow her to melt into the background; overcrowded settings create the most lonely scenarios, and Katniss likes being lonely. She doesn't deserve company, anyway.

Yet she agrees to meet Peeta at a club, and she deserts her typical "no-charity" policy—she always does at bars—and lets him buy her a beer, and the two of them perch themselves on wobbly stools, segregating themselves from outsiders despite being in the center of the crowd. He tries to ask her a myriad of questions like last time, but she still refuses to unwind before him; she allowed herself to be vulnerable with her last partner, and he had taken everything from her. She refuses to be so foolish ever again.

As the night becomes morning, however, she realizes Peeta isn't so easily fooled by her guard.

The bulk of the crowd has abandoned the scene, and so when he lowers his voice to a whisper, she's able to hear him.

"Someone hurt you." It's all he says.

She feels her chest tighten and the beer in her stomach curdles. He says it so abruptly, so out-of-the-blue that it startles her, rendering her speechless.

His blue eyes are kind and considerate, but they're void of the sympathy Katniss detests, so she finds she can't resent him. He doesn't pity her. He empathizes with her, he cares for her, but he doesn't look down at her as if she's some poor creature like so many before him would.

When she doesn't say a word, he fills the silence with the velvety texture of his voice, which slightly warms her icy core. "I don't want you to think that I'll do that to you. Whatever he—or she—did… please don't think I'll treat you like that."

She gazes back at him with tired silver eyes, a hopeless smile writing itself over her lips. "I don't trust easily."

She almost jumps out of her skin when she feels his pinky finger brushing against hers, the small motion a request for permission for a gesture more grand, more significant; her eyes give him the go-ahead, and suddenly he covers the back of her tiny hand with his palm. Again, the hint of warmth from his flesh sinks deep below her skin and, although it doesn't reach her core, it still feels better than the cold she's been trying to fend off for months.

"I guess I'm just going to have to prove I'm worthy, then."

Although she's not drunk, the alcohol in her system is not completely ignorable, and she sways a little when she walks. Peeta, being the chivalrous gentleman she's discovered he is, offers to walk her home since it's past midnight, she's slightly tipsy, and she can't weigh much over a hundred pounds, meaning her ability to defend herself is significantly reduced. They've learned not to trust these streets of Manhattan.

When they arrive at her apartment, she's initially determined not to let him see her less-than-ideal living conditions. But then, after bidding her a quick good-night and placing a soft kiss on her cheek for the second time, she can't resist. Her body is wracked with shivers, her heart starved for the affection she may have once earned but certainly doesn't deserve now, and here the golden baker boy stands, wanting to care for her. Before she knows what she's doing, she's snaking her arms around his neck, pulling his lips to hers.

He gasps against her mouth, probably out of surprise, but it doesn't take him long to respond. His strong but impossibly gentle hands are on her waist, on her back, on her shoulder blades; his touch causes her to arch her body against him, seeking out his warmth and miraculously finding it. She kicks the door in behind her and the two of them escape the watery grey lighting of the hallway to find a much more accommodating gloom in her apartment, their bodies nothing more than blackened silhouettes in the navy-shaded dark.

Katniss hasn't been able to kiss anyone since her breakup, because new lips always remind her of the old, but Peeta's kisses are far more reverent than anything she's ever experienced. So, for this moment, it's just him and her. His tongue seeks hers confidently, but not once does she feel he's fighting for dominance. Her old lover would kiss her aggressively, asserting his ownership over her, but Peeta's kisses are slow and humble, as if he has all the time in the world to worship her.

She can't imagine what she could've ever done to deserve the baker boy. He's an angel and she's a phantom, broken and hopeless and empty.

When she curves against him, Katniss feels Peeta growing hard against her stomach, and since she's been conditioned to offer her partner pleasure whenever possible, she doesn't think before she reaches in between them to press her palm against his growing bulge. The sound he makes is something of a yelp, and he jumps back.

"Katniss?"

All air evades her lungs, the familiar sensation of rejection drowning her like a tidal wave.

She gasps for an outlying breath, her palm flying to her blazing forehead, skin prickled in embarrassment. Her pupils are dilated from the kissing and the darkness, yet she can hardly make out his expression. She can see that his eyes are wide, that his hands are frozen at his sides, but all else eludes her.

"I'm—I'm sorry, Peeta," she chokes out, her veins pulsing. "I thought… I thought you would want me to—"

Just as quickly as they'd deserted her, his hands are on her again, but this time, the contact is innocent; his palms bracket her cheeks, bringing her face closer to his, so that they can see each other through the gloom.

"Of course I want you, but not like this. Not with the alcohol in the way. Not this early."

She feels like she's just been slammed into a brick wall. "W-what?" she stammers. She can't imagine that someone wouldn't want to take advantage of her. That's all she's good for, after all. Her last partner made that very clear. She's a plaything, a warm body—well, she's not even that anymore—to sleep with. A doll that can be used at his convenience to discard whenever he so pleases.

"Katniss, I…" He struggles for the right words to tell her, his hands lifting to his head where he runs his fingers, frustrated, through his thick curls. "I like you. A lot. Please understand that. I just… I don't want this to turn into a one-night stand sort of thing, or a relationship with meaningless sex, because... well, you're better than that, Katniss. We're better than that. We both deserve better than that."

It's the first time in years that anyone has told her she's worth anything, so naturally, she doesn't believe him. Her last relationship exposed every last flaw that love could embody until the entire concept became an unrealistic, unobtainable fantasy. She can make Peeta feel good—that was one of the few things she was confident she could do well—but she cannot love him, and she can't let him love her. She wants to be able to, but every last ounce of faith has drained from her frail body, locked away deep with her old lover, wherever he is now. She doesn't think she still loves him anymore, but she'd given her everything to him, and he'd taken it so willingly and so completely, never sparing her the heartache by giving it back.

Peeta gazes at her for the longest time, his bright eyes piercing through the gloom, and she doesn't realize she's speaking until the words have already fizzled in the air.

"I deserve nothing, Peeta."

His entire body grows still, and he stares at her for minute upon minute, her nearly-nonexistent confidence waning even further underneath his focus. She feels like a bug under a microscope—pinned down and helplessly exposed.

But suddenly, warmth prickles through her as his arms puncture the dark and coil around her body, bringing her gently but assertively to him. His fingers part through his hair as he cradles her head to his chest, and she can feel his heart beating. It's one of the most electrifyingly beautiful sounds she's heard in ages. Heartbeats can't lie, so she trusts them; now, for this miniscule fraction of a moment, she trusts him.

"You deserve the world," he tells her, his voice thick and shimmering and authentic; she almost believes him. "You should be loved, Katniss, and taken care of, and held. You do not deserve to be thrown around like a replaceable toy. You do not deserve to be victimized or abused. There is nothing you could've done to make you unworthy."

But doesn't he understand that she let herself be abused? She wasted her love on a man who threw her to the dogs, and she did it willingly, returning back to him time and time again, no matter how badly he hurt her. Some nights, she wonders if she'd still crawl back to him, if given the chance. She must've liked the pain because she refused to stay away from him despite knowing full well what he was doing to her. It's just as much her fault as his.

The worst of it is that she proved tonight that she's still a worthless piece of garbage, her depravity not limited to her previous relationship. Even if she doesn't, Peeta deserves to be loved to the ends of this earth, and here she is, toying with his emotions and soliciting his affections which she know will go to waste. She would've fucked Peeta—or let him fuck her—just so she could give him meaningless pleasure because that's all she's good for, but this boy is good for so much more. He deserves a girl like her high school friend, Madge Undersee, who was charming and refined and in mint condition. Katniss embodies the exact opposite. She's dirty and defective and broken beyond repair.

So then how can this gentle seraph of a boy be even remotely interested in her? And to say even that would be a gross understatement. Peeta clearly cares for her in a way that may be too inexpert and new-fangled to be classified as love, but he already respects her at a level that her old lover never came close to achieving. He doesn't see her clearly. She aches to tell him this, to urge him to desert her for his own good, but she can't bring herself to push him away.

Since her breakup, she's mastered the art of steeling her senses so that no one can pray to catch a glimpse of what she's truly feeling, and maybe it's because of the alcohol, but her resolve crumbles, and she finds herself reducing to a pile of tears in an alarmed Peeta's arms. Yet this does not deter him as she expects. Instead, his grip on her tightens, and he kisses her all over, not feverishly like her old lover; his lips are quick but doting as they press kisses to her hair, cheek, forehead, temple. He soon realizes she won't regain her composure immediately, and he carefully guides her through the darkened apartment, finding the mattress on the floor. If she wasn't such a wreck, she'd be concerned with his reaction once he learns she's too poor to buy even a frame for the bed. If it surprises him, he doesn't say a word to suggest it. He instead focuses on laying her body out over the mattress, and he dips down with her, cradling her against him in a manner so intimate that prompts her to cry even harder for a moment, but his hold on her doesn't relinquish.

Peeta may be an idiot for caring about her, but she has to admire his endurance. Not even her own mother held her this tightly when she broke down. And she's only known Peeta for a month.

After several minutes her tears subside, melting into distorted hiccups muffled by Peeta's shirt. It's after she's calmed that he lets her go, beginning to tug himself from the mattress, but her fragile hand shoots out and latches onto his wrist.

"Stay with me," she pleads, allowing him to see just how weak she is. She'd never intended to let him in this far, to give him access to the scars in her mind and her soul, but he's here now, and she supposes there's nothing she can do to erase that. He knows she was abused, more or less. He knows she's broken. And he's still here.

And now that he's wriggled his way into that torn, bruised, crumpled paper heart of hers, she realizes she needs him to stay. She doesn't want to need him, because it's healthy for neither her or the golden boy, but she does.

He stills for a moment, but after a few unsteady breaths she feels him crawl back over the creaky mattress, scooping her back into his grasp. He chases out the ice in her soul, replacing it with a strange, newfound warmth that she assumes will scamper away in the morning light, but for the time being, she embraces it.

She falls asleep within the minute, more comfortable and more secure than she's felt in ages. As her conscious is fading, she hears him murmur something, possibly a response to her earlier request, but sleep ropes her in before she can decipher what it was.

The mattress is cold when Katniss wakes, the sheets mangled and knotted around her contorted body. She is alone. Her throat feels thick and her eyes begin to sting, but she reminds herself that she should've expected it, because why would Peeta stay the night?

She ties a navy blue robe around her skeletal frame in search of warmth, but her apartment is still winter; only Peeta was summer.

Something startles her when she's about to leave the bedroom—a sound? She crinkles up her nose as a vaguely familiar fragrance billows around her, and if she didn't know better, she'd say she smelled…

Pancakes?

She stumbles out of the bedroom to discover, with all reactionary heartbeats included, that she's not alone as she'd originally predicted. The baker boy stands at the stove, back to her, wearing a faded pair of grey sweatpants and nothing to cover those impossibly broad shoulders of his, the muscles in his back straining and flexing as he works away.

Her mouth dries.

"What are you doing?"

He turns to face her nonchalantly, as if he'd already known she was there, a soft smirk written over his lips. His curls are arranged so neatly on his head, his face clean-shaven, and she doesn't recall seeing those pants before so she arrives at the conclusion that he's been out.

But it's only eight in the morning.

"C'mere," he prompts huskily, and she obliges, after which he tucks her into his side, lacing his scent of crushed vanilla and cinnamon around her silhouette. He presses a quick kiss to her ruffled braid as if this is the most normal thing in the world, and her chest tightens as she wonders if it could be. "I called in sick to work this morning so I could make you some pancakes, just in case you were battling a hangover. I get the impression you don't handle your booze really well."

Her hands ball into fists as she assumes that's a comment on her weight, but then she remembers her behavior last night, and she understands he's making reference to that. Peeta's intelligent enough to avoid the topic of her emaciation, knowing there's nothing he can do. She's too poor and hardly hungry anyway, and doesn't accept charity.

But she'll accept pancakes.

"You were out of a lot of ingredients—" Or all of the ingredients—"So I ran to the store while I was out grabbing a quick change of clothes." He looks at her and notices her eyes are pinned on his bare torso, gawking at how sculpted the golden boy really is. Her focus traces the light dusting of blonde hair over his chest, falling to the trail that leads from his belly button below his waistband. She gulps. "I planned on wearing a shirt, I promise. But your apartment is so damn hot."

It still feels like fucking Antarctica, she wants to bite back, although the temperature is a little more bearable with his arm around her waist.

She parts from him for a moment to peek into the fridge, appalled at the sight of actual food lining the shelves as opposed to a few leftover takeout boxes. He brought her milk—two percent?—eggs, a bin of strawberries, a pack of bacon…

"Peeta, you went a little overboard."

He shrugs indifferently as his spatula skates against the pan, flipping over a perfectly circular pancake.

"I can't… this is too much." Even if she did know what to do with the food, which she surely doesn't, she can't accept his goodwill. She hasn't earned it, and she can't repay him.

"What's done is done," he tells her with a smile. "And, if it makes you feel better, we can consider these my groceries that I'm just storing in your apartment. That'll at least give me an excuse to come back here and cook for you, right?"

He's impossible.

She's never been so attracted to impossible.

He cooks them bacon, too, and cuts up the strawberries for them to share, and the two of them sit crisscross applesauce on the bare hardwood floor of her apartment. Peeta is kind to her, prompting her with his typical onslaught of questions, and she surprises both him and her by returning more than single-word replies.

Things are easy with Peeta, but she realizes that does not mean they are simple. She finds that the more he wriggles his way into her conscious, the more complex their relationship becomes. Before, she could easily dismiss him as a kind companion with not even a string to tie them together, but now that he's here, sleeping in her apartment and making her breakfast in the mornings and trying to understand her, things are hopelessly complicated. She's not accustomed to a man taking the time to explore her emotionally, not physically, and it frightens her. It turns the lights in her mind to shadows, the clouds into tempests.

Once he knows her, and really knows her, he'll run away. No one stays. Maybe for a night, for a week, for a month. But he'll soon discover she's too broken to be mended and that all his efforts are in vain. He can pour as much affection into her starving body as possible, but in the end she will still remain a ghostly skeleton, ravenous and wasted. And he'll be empty, too.

He doesn't sleep at her apartment every night, since bakers' children must rise before the sun, but he returns, time and time again. Peeta does what Katniss did with her old lover: he crawls back to the source of his—or her—depravity. After two, three, four months have passed, and Peeta still hasn't run away, she realizes exactly what this means, and it shreds her into tiny shards, as if she wasn't already broken.

Peeta is falling in love with her. He tells her one November afternoon over coffee. He does not profess it through some grandiose gesture; rather, he says it as if he's known it all along and it's nothing to flaunt. I think I love you, he says nonchalantly in the same tone that someone would say It's raining outside or I'm going to take a nap. His love is a fact, and he states it as such. His love is simple, pure, straightforward. Honest.

And it kills her.

Not only is she incapable of loving him, but she's clueless as to how she's supposed to receive his love in turn. How can she be loved? How is she expected to look Peeta in those beautifully sincere blue eyes of his and tell him that he's wasting his love on her? Doesn't he understand that she's still haunted by her old lover who's mounted himself on a high pedestal in the front of her brain, and will be there forever? She was with him for five years before he decided the big-breasted blonde in 4B was of greater value than Katniss. She gave him her life, which is not a concession she can pretend was never traded hands. It doesn't matter that Peeta is gentle, and sweet, and forgiving, and trusting. He can't erase her past. He can't carry her baggage for her.

She wonders if Peeta will become like her when this is all over. If he'll trade his sunshine for rain, his smile for a grimace, his melody for silence. His warmth for winter. Her skinny, malnourished love will take root in him like a parasite, hijacking his every move until he can't love again either, because every time he tries to sleep, Katniss's silver eyes will materialize.

So when he tells her he thinks he loves her, she gets up and leaves.

He comes to her apartment right before sundown, his hair tousled, his eyes tired and apologetic, and he says he didn't mean to frighten her. She tells him to stay away from her. He tries to let himself in, to reason with her, to somehow win what is too far beyond his reach, but she rebuffs him.

"You can't love me, Peeta," she snarls, gritting her teeth. She wants to scare him away.

But how could she underestimate his endurance? His perseverance?

"It's too late, Katniss." His expression is pleading, his voice soft and silky, and she wants to punch a wall with her fragile little fist.

Her fingers clench, unclench, clench, unclench. She feels bile in her throat. She backs into her apartment, pacing in circles on the hardwood floor, the waning light of afternoon puncturing her apartment in broken shards until it's glowing a sickly gold, and she digs her nails into her palms until all she can feel is the pain. She knows how to deal with physical pain better than what's in her head.

Once he sees what she's doing, Peeta bolts forward and grasps her wrists, sliding his fingers underneath hers to keep her from hurting herself; she struggles, but he's stronger than her with his corded forearms and confident hands from kneading dough all these years. Although he did this with good intentions, the fact that someone has his hands on Katniss, that someone has power over her, sends her mind reeling, and all she can picture is her old lover with his aggressive clutch and angry eyes. Black and crimson hues bleed behind her lids, her entire body seized by a flash of heat. She shrieks and tears away with a burst of energy, and before she knows what she's doing, she's taken a cracked flowerpot from the windowsill into her hands and hurled it at her assailant.

It's only once she sees blood that she realizes her assailant really isn't an assailant at all. He'd crossed his arms reflexively in front of his face when she'd thrown the pot at him, so now he holds his hand before his widened eyes, focus raking over the reddening gashes on his palm, and without a word he's walked himself to the bathroom.

Katniss doesn't move. Even if she wanted to, she can't; her feet have secured themselves to the floorboards, her body rigid as concrete. She's vaguely aware of the sounds of running water in the bathroom as Peeta washes out his cut and the standard resonance of traffic from beyond her window, but other than that, her world is silent. Even the ringing in her ears that has been filling her tired mind with shrieks for the past few months has died. She can't think.

After a few minutes, Peeta emerges from the bathroom with a red-splotched rag tied around his palm. He donates one final look to her which contains a myriad of emotions she can't possibly begin to untangle, and with that he's gone, softly closing the door behind him.

Within a moment she's on her knees in the bathroom, vomiting whatever she has in her stomach into the toilet. When she's done wrenching, she shakily steadies herself before the mirror, her entire body trembling and icy and aching. The sink is spotted with diluted drops of blood, slivers of the ceramic flowerpot littering the counter, and she can't believe what she's just done, unable to comprehend the extent of which she's just hurt Peeta. He was merely trying to help her, to stop her from hurting herself, and she lashed out.

Her breaths are choked and her fingers and toes are numb. The monster in the mirror watches her with disgusted iron eyes, its complexion the shade of hollow ivory, its flesh pulled over sharp angles like animal hide, and she half-expects this beast to laugh at her, at her stupidity, at her depravity, at her psychosis.

You scared him away, the monster tells her, its voice distorted and filled with gravel. The only thing that could ever be blind enough to love you.

"It's for the best," she says aloud, surprised at the assertiveness in her own tone. "I don't want to break Peeta like I've been broken."

Too late, Sweetheart.

She retreats to the vacant foyer and paces around the apartment for a while longer, trying to make sense of the noise in her head, but it's all too deafening, too tangled, and she finds herself clamping her palms to her ears and rocking back and forth on the icy floor. As if she's nothing more than a helpless child.

She wants to go back. She wants to do it all over again, and walk past that bakery on that particular July afternoon so that she wouldn't ever have the pleasure of meeting Peeta, because she's ruined him. She's greedily taken the love that wasn't hers to take, and she can't give it back. She can turn him away, but she can't erase herself from his mind, and now she'll haunt him.

"Let me take it back," she sobs to her empty apartment, her voice ringing against the peeling walls. "Let me start over again."

The monster, once again, does not keep to silence.

Too late, Sweetheart.

She doesn't know what she's doing here, what on earth would've compelled her to come to this musky tavern at midnight. She hasn't been here in months, for good reason.

It's where she met him over five years ago. It's the bar behind which lies the alleyway where he first kissed her, where he shoved his hand up her skirt and made her shatter between his body and the brick wall. Then, Katniss had liked his fire, as it was much like hers. He was exciting, and she loved to be thrilled.

But naturally, two fires of the same flame cannot coincide for long, and his blaze engulfed hers, suffocating hers, until she was nothing but a pile of ash and he was a fucking inferno.

The place hasn't changed much. The air is still foggy with cigarette smoke, the stench of booze and tobacco bathing her skin free of everything Peeta. The tang of the room overwhelms her senses so that she can't remember Peeta's distinct cinnamon and vanilla scent, which is for the best.

The bartender, while wringing a stained towel in his leathery hands, comes up and asks her what she'd like to drink. She tells him some water will do, as she doesn't have a cent for booze, but he tells her someone has offered to grab her tab. She tweaks a brow, confused—who would want to buy a drink for a skeleton in a pair of sweatpants?—when the bartender points to a man standing behind her, and she whirls around in her stool and almost vomits.

"Hey, Catnip."

There he stands, cocky smirk written into his lips with the characteristic glint in his eyes. For a moment, she almost forgets that she hasn't seen him since the spring, because nothing about him has changed. His narrow silver eyes still devour her as if she's a meal rather than a girl, his shoulders squared, chin tweaked up in his distinctive power-pose. He still towers over her. He is still stronger than her, in every sense of the word.

She can hardly wheeze out his name.

"Gale."

He appraises her, eyes slowly trailing over her tiny body, his stare becoming more predatory with every second. She wants to shrivel up under his gaze as it makes her feel like a slab of raw meat.

She avoids his eyes when he says, "Looks like you've been having a real hard time without me."

"It's been a rough day," she replies quietly, her voice trapped somewhere in the back of her throat. That's how it always was—always is—with Gale.

His countering chuckle is dark. "And I'm sure every other day has been a walk in the park."

Exasperation swirls in her lungs. She feels her fingers curl around the lip of the barstool, clenching tightly for support, as if it's the only thing anchoring her to this earth. "What do you want, Gale?" Her eyes squeeze shut as she speaks, the tremor in her soft voice obvious enough to elicit a satisfied smirk from her old partner.

"I thought I always made it pretty obvious what I wanted," he says indifferently, crossing those corded arms that had squeezed her too tightly and pinned her down too often. She winces.

She lifts two quivering fingers to massage her temple, attempting to drain the noise in her head, but it only grows more obnoxious, as does her shivering. Her lips must be blue. "Gale… why are you talking to me?" she manages to mumble, her patience thinning to nothing more than the thickness of a sheet of paper.

"Why are you here?" he fires back immediately. "At our bar? Couldn't stay away from me, could you?"

He looks so goddamn pleased with himself, and his smile makes her want to vomit. Just being in the same room with him triggers her muscles to grow rigid and cold, her systems thrown for a loop. Here Gale Hawthorne stands, the only man she was ever truly in love with, and the only man she's ever wanted to wring the life out of. She hates him. She hates him for everything he did to her, everything he was, everything he is, and how he syphoned off every last drop of her happiness and left her devastated, and how, even after all of this, her heart still beats for him. Not in the way it used to, as she's not captivated by his quasi-suave, power-hungry façade anymore… but he was her life for five whole years.

She can't let him go.

She doesn't love him—at least, she doesn't think she does—but she still cares for him, no matter how twisted and pathetic the notion may be. And that is why she is worthless. That is why she could never deserve someone as beautifully kind and compassionate as Peeta Mellark. Because she is the victim, she knows she's the victim, and a piece of her still rests with her abuser.

Several moments have passed before Katniss realizes she's been silent for too long, because suddenly Gale's laughter rips her from her trance. "You're even worse than when I left you." He rudely snaps his fingers in front of her eyes, causing her lids to flutter rapidly in shock. She turns her head away from him, pressing her tight, whitened knuckles to her teeth, begging herself to keep her composure.

Through her peripheral vision she can see Gale leaning closer to her, the pungent stench of booze drizzling from his wet mouth, and he rests his hand on her thigh. Her legs part a little out of habit, her head whipping back to align with Gale's, and his gaze has instantly softened.

"Sorry, Catnip. I didn't come over here to tease you." His words are slower, more calculated, his eyes wide in pseudo-apology. Naturally, her heart thumps against her rib cage; hadn't it been assurances like this that kept her crawling back? Gale hadn't always been sadistic—he had mild moments, too. No human knows only dark. Even the blackest of hearts have pumped warm blood through their arteries.

His fingers curl around her thigh a little, and the voices in her head scream for her to push him away, but she can't. Even when he told her he'd been fucking the blonde from 4B, she still clung to him, however ridiculous.

"What do you want from me?" she asks him weakly as he slides over the stool beside her, his hand still possessively affixed to the inside of her leg.

He leans closer, his breath swirling in warm, foul tendrils around the shell of her ear. "Me and Glimmer didn't work out. Apparently, I wasn't the only guy she was giving favors to."

So now he knows what it's like to be cheated on. "Does this mean—"

His lips latch onto her earlobe, and she tries so desperately to stifle her gasp. The little sound that beads up in the back of her throat is one of surprise, but Gale must take it as something more personal, because his hand slides up her thigh and curls tighter.

"I'll take you back, Catnip."

Before she can even process what he's just said, his free hand roughly cups her jaw and tilts her face to his, his mouth colliding with hers. He's as aggressive as ever, his lips possessive in their service, and the hand on her leg hungrily slides over the apex of her thighs. Even though his palm grasps her from over her sweatpants, the touch sends a jolt through her body, and once again her mind is flooded with crimson and black, an unpleasant white-hot flash of heat tearing through her veins. This moment is her afternoon all over again, except this time, the man is not Peeta, and he's not trying to protect her.

She chokes against Gale's lips as her composure falls to ash, and suddenly her hands are moving on their own accord. She has very little strength pent up in her emaciated frame, but somehow, she manages to flatten her palms against Gale's chest and push him back, his lips making a sickening pop as they leave hers.

"What the—"

Katniss gags as she stumbles to her feet, backing away from the bar—she's collected a few startled gazes from the surrounding bar-goers, but most of them are too drunk to really absorb the gravity of her situation—and she clutches her trembling fingers against her lips, her pulse racing at what could be a thousand beats per minute. She's on fire, consumed by flame, burning. Her entire body is shaking.

"What is the fuck is wrong with you?" Gale roars at her, rage flashing in his mercury eyes as he rises to his feet. He towers over her easily, and she shrinks as she staggers backward to put a safe distance between their bodies, but if he wanted, he could effortlessly snap her in half. She knows that. She knows he knows that.

"I—" What is she doing? Rejecting Gale? She's never been capable of refusing him since the night she met him. Now, she fumbles for the words to say, but they pointedly evade her. She doesn't know how to tell him 'no,' because she never has.

"I—? I—?" He mocks her stuttering, his olive-toned skin flushing red with indignation, and he thrusts out a massive hand to clutch her arm. His fingers tauten on her; she's afraid that, with his strength and her fragility, he may just shatter her bones. "You what, Katniss? You actually think you're better off without me?"

She stares at him blankly, eyes widening in fear; he's backed her up against an empty booth, the curve of her backside pressing against the lip of the table. She's trapped.

"Oh, and now you're suddenly mute?"

"Gale, please!" she hisses back at him, finding that those are the only words that bubble to her lips. She's mastered the art of begging, but exactly what she's pleading for, she's unsure—is she asking him to stop mocking her? To leave her alone? To quit talking and just take her home with him, acting as if these last few months had never existed?—and she fishes for something else to say. But her mind is bursting with thousands of voices all snarled and knotted together, and she shakes her head rapidly to clear it, but the chaos only worsens. Her mind is a sea of madness, and she's sinking, drowning.

His hand roughly releases her arm. "Please, what?"

"Gale—" Her teeth are chattering. She hugs her arms to her body, desperate for heat, wherever it may be. "I can't… I can't keep doing this."

He chuckles darkly. "Like you have something better to do. Look at you." He motions to her sweats, her punctured jacket, her disheveled braid. "You're a mess without me. You need me, Katniss. We're good together."

She shakes her head but doesn't say anything else. Her voice is lodged deep in the recess of her throat, not moving an inch.

"You can't deny me, Catnip." His voice is softer now, almost as if it's his turn to beg. Does he really want her back? "You've never done it before. Why now? Can't you see that neither of us work well on our own? You're loyal to me, and I appreciate that. I really do. And I can take care of you."

His promise may be partially true—with Gale, although they didn't have much, there was always takeout on the table and a warm bed to come home to, which is better than whatever she has now.

All she's had these past few months were an empty kitchen and a creaky, stained mattress.

But then… then, there was Peeta. Peeta took care of her in a way that outshone Gale even on its worst of days. She thinks of the breakfasts he would make her on the mornings he didn't have work, and the way his body fit so perfectly as it contoured hers, and how he would always give her goodnight kisses—or texts, when he wasn't with her—just to remind her that she wasn't alone.

How he'd sleep with her, but he wouldn't sleep with her because they weren't ready yet, because he respected her. How he'd brush her hair for her and rub the knots from her shoulders just to help her relax. How he'd tell her she was beautiful, which he'd do more often when she was merely in sweats without even a touch of makeup.

How he'd take walks with her so they could just talk, escaping all the worries and the obligations of the world around them, even if only for an hour at a time.

How he'd hold her hand when they did so.

How he'd kiss her cheek.

It's now that she realizes she was wrong to think she had no room in her heart left for Peeta. Her heart may be shredded and crumpled, and her love may be skinny, but it can be fed and nourished and repaired with time. Not right away, because those things don't happen overnight.

But eventually.

And Peeta was willing to help her. He was willing to pour all his love into her famished soul until her edges grew curves and her blood became warm and she was able to smile on her own.

She may have thrown everything she had with the baker boy away, which was what's best for him, but in her head, she smiles at the monster who's grown silent with worry as she tells it, It's never too late. Because it's not. She may not yet understand how she could deserve the love of someone as benevolent and as whole as Peeta, but that doesn't mean she will never be able to. Redemption is possible. Forgiveness is real.

Her gaze is slow in its journey to meet Gale's, and she says the single word she never said to him once during the five years he selfishly took from her.

"No."

He jolts back as if he's just been slapped. "What?"

"I said no," she reiterates, a little more forcefully this time, a low growl propelling her voice from her lips like a motor.

He glowers at her for a few moments, his jaw lax in surprise, when he lifts his hands to run them through his chestnut hair. He stares up at the ceiling, a humorless chuckle fizzling from his throat. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

Her fingers ball into fists at her sides. "Why would I be joking?"

Gale's eyes scoop into hers again, and he stares at her as if she's just announced she's actually been an alien this whole time.

"Do you think you can do better than me? That you'll be able to find someone else?"

She folds her arms over her chest, returning to the silence she's become so well acquainted with. This is not about finding someone better… doesn't he understand?

This outrageous decision of hers is a matter of recovery, not of confidence. It's not as if she'll leave Gale's toxic hold and flee to seek support of another. This is about learning to stand on her own two feet.

If someone as intelligent as Peeta could have loved her, she must hold some degree of worth, no matter how questionable her value may be. She was a fire before she met Gale—she can surely become one after him, in time.

Gale laughs again.

"No one else is going to want you, Katniss." He gestures to her disheveled appearance once more, as if something so superficial is what determines her worth. "Who will love you? Who will fight for you?"

The answer seems so simple, so obvious, as if it's a tangible element hanging in the musky atmosphere directly above their heads.

Her chest lifts, her jaw squares, and for the first time this night, her voice lies eagerly on the tip of her tongue, primed for application.

She inhales.

"Me."

One, two, three hours tick by as Katniss lays coiled on her mattress, her dirty sheets tangled around her calves and toes, her mind too riotous to allow slumber. She alternates every few minutes between tears, satisfaction, and fear, as she tries to understand the gravity of what she's just done.

She's left Gale.

On her own accord.

Permanently.

Somehow, magically, she identified the power he held over her and she took it with her own trembling hands. Her life belongs to her again.

This notion is just as frightening as it is liberating, however. What does she do now? Where does she go? She's time-hopped back to square one where she's obligated to start all over again, finding her way independently.

Of course, she'd be lying if she said she was entirely free of Gale's hold. Even after she marched out of that tavern, his silver eyes were still lodged in the back of her mind, as she imagines they'll be for quite some time. But the beauty of the situation rises from her conscious decision to walk away. She's in control of her own life, now. She doesn't have Gale's antagonistic hold to dictate how she acts, how she feels, how she breathes.

It's like she's on parole, she tells herself. Not completely free, but her back is turned to the worst of it. Things can only get brighter from here.

Still, she finds herself drowning in intermittent spells of dejection. Tears streak over her sunken cheeks over and over again as she goes through cycles of self-doubt and anger at what she's done. She'll be content for one minute and then sobbing the next.

But no one said the road to recovery was ever easy, especially when facing it alone.

She's lying on her stomach, her face buried into her pillow as she lets her exhaustion settle into her bones when she hears a light rapping echoing through her apartment. Her ears zero in on the sound, which has melted to silence, and at first she thinks she's imagined it.

But then it rings again. The pattern is soft, but it's hollow as it echoes through her apartment, and within moments she's on her feet.

Someone is knocking on her door.

She swipes her fingers under her eyes to collect any remaining liquid and stumbles through the darkened flat, tripping over the cuffs on her sweats as she falls against her door. Her fingers clasp around the knob, and without even checking to see who her visitor is, she tugs the door open.

There, in the corridor lit with a watery-grey glow, stands Peeta Mellark, his hands—one of which is bandaged in a light wrapping of gauze—cupped around a small flower pot, in the center of which a small yellow bud has blossomed. A dandelion.

Katniss blinks once, twice, three times. She lifts a finger and pinches her arms through her sweater. Still, nothing.

Peeta chuckles breathily. "You're not dreaming."

She stands motionless in the doorway, her eyes flickering from the boy's glimmering eyes, to the flower pot, to his hand, back to his face. He's smiling apologetically at her, as if he was the one who hurt her, and she can't help but gape at him.

"What are you doing here?"

He lifts his non-wrapped hand to brush it through his curls. God, she loves those curls. "I shouldn't have run out on you like that without even trying to talk with you," he tells her quietly. "I told you once that you can trust me, that I won't hurt you, and I scared you and took off. That wasn't very noble of me."

"You told me you loved me and I ran away from you, and then almost killed you with a flower pot. I think I win the award for being less noble."

She sees the dimple form in his left cheek as he grins sadly at her, his arms stretching to offer her the flower pot. At the gesture, she lifts her brow in a disbelieving stare. This boy is always giving and giving and giving.

And she is always taking and taking and taking. With an encouraging smile, he somehow convinces her to receive the ceramic vessel from him, her fingers brushing with his in the exchange. An electrical pulse shocks between them, and she wonders if he feels it, too.

"To replace the broken one, Miss." He smiles boyishly through the threshold at her.

That settles it.

She welcomes him into her apartment, and she slips the pot onto the darkened window sill before flickering on the lights in her apartment so that she can see him, and so that he can see her, because she doesn't want to hide from him anymore. She's tired of shadows.

They sit crisscross applesauce over her creaky floorboards like they had that first morning he made her pancakes, only this time they're nourishing their starved souls, ravenous and eager to serve the other. She decides it's about time she stop letting her heart go unfed, and started accepting his affection, because only once she accepts it is she capable of returning it. Maybe that's why Gale couldn't love her. He never thought her love was enough.

For Peeta, their reality lies on the opposite end of the spectrum. She couldn't accept it because she thought it was too much.

But from here on out, she decides, things will be different.

So she starts by uncloaking her secrets and baring herself for the gentle baker boy, revealing all of the hidden truths she's kept bottled inside her for years. She begins by telling him about Gale, sparing him no details, because if she wants to recover, she has to conquer the denial. She relays a synopsis of their relationship, how it'd turned sour so quickly and was submerged ever since. She tells him about the bruises, about the scars. About the recurrent nights where he'd force himself on her, and she was too weak or too afraid to refuse him. Peeta does not speak, as she assumes he's afraid his own speech will silence hers, but within a few short moments he's taken her hands in his to encourage her confession. It emboldens her.

She knows there must be details he doesn't want to hear, but her long silence has exhausted her, and now she's awoken from her too-long slumber.

She only makes it halfway through before her vision blurs and tears spill over her cheeks again, and Peeta wipes them away for her, urging her to continue. She realizes he must really care about her if he's willing to return after such a violent outburst and listen to her entire memoir, and this recognition only makes her cry harder.

Katniss finishes by explaining that she saw Gale tonight, which is what prompted her revelation and her sudden craving of redemption. She wants Peeta to know that she's done letting Gale's memory control her.

When she's finished speaking, Peeta lifts one of her trembling hands to lips where he presses reverent kisses over her fingertips.

"That's why you lashed out when I grabbed your wrist," he says quietly in abrupt comprehension. "It reminded you of him."

Her nod is solemn.

But an assiduous curiosity still lingers behind his irises, and she can see by the way his jaw lowers and clenches shut again that one of his questions has been left unanswered, and with a following nod, she encourages him to ask.

He inhales shakily.

"Then… why did you tell me I can't love you?"

There's no use in walling herself in now. After all he's done for her—especially after he's returned to her, bearing forgiveness—he at least warrants this explanation, even if it'll push him away from her.

"Because you deserve better," she croons somberly, her eyes falling away from his in shame. "My love is defective, Peeta. I'm defective."

Suddenly, he's leaning in, bracketing her cheeks in his calloused palms, the gauze of his injured hand raising goose bumps over her skin. "You're not defective. Being a victim of abuse doesn't mean you ever deserved it, and it certainly doesn't make you not good enough. Just because he couldn't value you, it doesn't mean you have no worth."

"But I'm crazy."

"You're not crazy," he defends immediately, his thumb brushing under her eyelid to swipe away a rogue tear as he smiles sadly at her. "You were traumatized. You've been depressed. You've had a human reaction to monstrous treatment."

When she doesn't say anything, her eyes finding focus on a knot in the floorboard—anything to avoid his gaze—he presses his forehead against hers, his own eyes closing for a moment. "Please don't ever think you don't deserve love, Katniss. After everything you've been though, you deserve it the most."

Before she has the chance to respond, the air between them grows hot as he eliminates the distance, pressing his lips gently against hers. She can tell by the way his kiss is impossibly delicate that he only intends for it to last a moment, using the gesture as a way of averring his affection for her rather than out of need to taste her, but the moment their mouths slant against the other, something in her stomach bursts, and she feels a white-hot heat shooting from her lips down between her thighs.

This heat, unlike its cousin from earlier, is much more welcome.

She feels her fingers tangling in the thin fabric of his shirt which causes him to drag away from her for a moment, his eyes inquisitive despite his fat pupils.

"Are you sure you want this?" he whispers, his voice swirling against her tingling flesh.

She realizes that Peeta's the first man to ever want to verify their mutual connection, and the fact that he's willingly divvying the power between them rather than taking it for his own feels unbelievably glorious.

"I want you," she hums, infatuated with the texture of truth as it curls around her tongue.

He accepts her answer, his lips slanting over hers again, his mouth moving with intent even in its gentleness. Her breath becomes a feathery sigh, which must encourage the baker boy, because his fingers slide eagerly from her jaw and into the tangle of her braid, securing her face to his, but he never exercises too much pressure. She can tell that he's actively regulating his force as to avoid frightening her, and the idea of gentle love rather than aggressive lust causes all sorts of heat to transfuse through her body.

He scoops her into his arms, relocating her to the bedroom, and he flicks the lights off on his way. The mattress is crooked over the scratched veneer, and he's careful to lay her body out in the middle when he deposits her, his movements calculated and languid as he joins her on the bed. She gazes up at him hungrily as he settles over her, taking the time to tuck a stray wisp of her hair behind her ear.

He chuckles lightly at her, and she assumes it's because she's squirming underneath him, anxious for his touch to rediscover her. "Patience, love," he whispers through the stonewashed gloom. "We've got all the time in the world."

This is how she knows his love is real. Love is unwearied, tender, balanced.

When he finally brings his lips back to hers, she feels as if she's drinking water for the first time in weeks, and she strains her body against his to quench her thirst. His taste is mutely saccharine, but paired with his familiar cinnamon-vanilla scent, Katniss finds herself craving him more fully, and she weaves her fingers into the soft curls at the nape of his neck to bring him closer, always closer. Her tongue hesitantly sweeps over his bottom lip, and the little reactionary sound he makes at her boldness only vitalizes her, and she parts her lips, beckoning him to do the same.

She remembers him endorsing their abstinence several months back, asserting that both of them deserved better, that they should not fully give themselves to each other until it meant something, and she has no doubt in her mind that he means something, now. Well, more than "something." That term hardly seemed adequate to cover it.

When her fingers hook under the waistband of his shorts, his lips break from hers so that he can look at her, his gauze-swathed palm cradling the side of her face.

"Katniss?"

"Yes?"

His thumb brushes delicately over her cheekbone. "Please tell me you want this. Not for just for me, but for you, too."

She can't remember the last time she'd used sex as a tool explicitly for her own pleasure.

The smile that she gifts him with is the most genuine she's produced in weeks as she murmurs, "I want this for us."

Peeta needs no further convincing.

They peel their clothing from their ready bodies, baring themselves for the other, proving they each have nothing to conceal. He's already paraded his soul before her time in time again, since their first walk to the first time he admitted to loving her, and every moment in between. Peeta has been an open book since the day Katniss peeled back his front cover.

Katniss, on the other hand, has spent nearly every waking moment of their relationship tucking her truths away, magnetized by the darkness, so intent on hiding her scars so Peeta would never be forced to see the depths of her depravity. But when she did finally break her silence by opening all her doors, not only did Peeta not run away, but he embraced her tighter, loving her more completely.

Love is possible only in the presence of truth.

With tender touches, Peeta carefully shifts himself between Katniss's legs, his fingers working over every inch of her bare skin as if she's made of silk. He peppers kisses to her lips, jaw, neck, the column of her throat, her collar, before he moves down to her breasts, bringing his mouth to the roseate peak of one, his palm expertly kneading the other as if it were the dough he works with day after day. He suckles the flesh into his mouth, his tongue swirling around her in a way that makes her spine arch up, her torso pressing against his chest as she gasps for air. His lips are slow and venerating, but it makes Katniss squirm, and she braids her fingers into Peeta's hair, holding him against her. Heat prickles from all areas of her body and settles at the base of her belly, her thighs parting as she curves against Peeta, searching for some relief for the ache at her center.

She squeals in disapprobation when Peeta's mouth leaves her skin, but it soon rejoins with her own lips, and a sigh of contentment pours from her lungs into his. His injured hand slides over her jaw, fingertips raking through the hair at the base of her neck, the other venturing down to past belly, his touch feathery against the sensitive skin of her inner thigh.

Their lips part as his hand sweeps from her leg upward, discovering a new area of her, ghosting over the slick heat that pools there. Upon the contact, Katniss releases a soft moan which is quickly collected by Peeta's eager lips, his tongue seeking and finding hers as he lets a finger slip inside, prompting yet another sound to shimmer in her throat. His motions are slow, careful, adoring as he slides his finger out and then in, adding a second digit. She opens her legs wider, granting him more access, and he moans in approval.

When he pulls his fingers completely from her core, he explores elsewhere until he finds the point of her center which, when brushed against, causes her body to writhe in a way that must be tremendously attractive to the golden boy because her moans bleed into his until they cannot be told apart. He continues to work her over slowly, patiently, until she's slick enough to accommodate him.

He lets them lie still for a moment in the quiet, their staggered pants synchronizing into a single breath. He presses a single kiss to her forehead, then her nose, before he guides himself to her entrance, and suddenly, they're merged.

The feel of him is different than anyone before—maybe it's because he waits until she's comfortable to move, and so she adjusts to him more fully—and so when she pleads for him to move, the pain almost instantly dulls into a tingling ache.

And he feels glorious. He worships every inch of her body he can reach with his mouth and his fingers as his hips move steadily against hers, driving forward and back, eliciting gasps with each gentle movement. Her own lips find the soft hollow below his ear, and he releases a groan so rich that it resonates in every corner of her small, fragile frame.

Peeta is careful with her, as Katniss is well aware that he is intent on finding her own pleasure along with his own; he still holds true to his promise to not hurt her, for his touches are delicate, but they never lack in confidence. He guides her, but he does not control her.

She spreads herself wider, her feet digging into the small of his back to bring him closer, deeper, and they both gasp in indulgence. She doesn't even have an outside desire to compare Peeta to anyone else, because as he lies here with her, slowly rocking into her and building her up higher, higher, there's no possible parallel. Tonight is the first night she understands what it means to make love with someone, because with Peeta's lyrical motions and the soft cadences falling from his lips, she has never felt so precious and so adored.

He tells her he loves her time and time again, in hope that she'll begin to believe him, his promise finding purchase on her lips, her neck, her breasts. Each word causes that tension in her belly to increase, growing and expanding until it's rooting much deeper than just in her core.

When she tells Peeta she's close to the peak she so rarely arrives at, he skates a hand between their bodies and finds that epicenter for the second time, massaging her in small, tight circles until she's there, she's here, with him, and she cries out against his lips as he brings her over the edge, into a world made of stars and heat and color. He follows immediately after, muffling his own moan into the juncture between her shoulder and her neck, his lips sliding against her skin.

They lay there for a while like gelatin figurines, and even though his weight over her limits the breath in her lungs, it feels wonderful, because he's so warm and so close. She curls her fingers in his sweaty hair, clutching him to her, fearing he'll disappear if she lets him go untouched for even a split second.

When their minds have finally anchored back in reality, he flips them both over, and her cheek nestles against his chest, his arm cocooning her against his side. She feels his fingers absent-mindedly toying with the end of her braid, and he dots her forehead with several lazy kisses before telling her, once more, "I love you."

That night, she is not yet able to say it back, but he tells her affectionately that it's alright. As long as she accepts it, they've made progress.

They repeat their endeavors night after night, until Katniss's reservations are all but completely erased, and she nearly forgets what it's like to have sex without making love, and Peeta tells her he loves her more than the sun and the moon, and she, miraculously, learns to believe him.

He transforms her winter into summer, bringing her the heat that had so eagerly evaded her since last spring. And when their new spring arrives in Manhattan, she takes a walk with him one day to discover she can now feel the pleasant warmth of a light breeze again. She'd almost forgotten.

There's not a day that passes as March becomes April, and April becomes May, and May becomes June, and June becomes the month in which they met, that Peeta does not remind her how fully he loves her. By the time a year has elapsed since she first ducked into his bakery, she can hardly remember what it feels like to doubt Peeta's affection.

And so she heals. There are still nights in which she awakes sobbing and thrashing, and he must hold her until she remembers that things are better, learning to differentiate between what is real and not real. There are still times when Peeta accidentally holds a little too hard, and her mind reels, her stomach curdling, and she has to rock herself back into reality.

But Peeta fights for her. And she has learned to fight for herself, too. So happiness never wanders too far from them.

One night, after Peeta has turned her world into stardust multiple times over, and he tells her he loves her like he always does, she's startled to hear it echoed into the sticky air of her bedroom, thick with the sugary cocktail of heat and sweat.

"I love you, too."

She's startled by it, yes, but not repentant. She doesn't doubt even for a second that she means it. The love she was once expertly accustomed to had been complex, complete with strain and jealousy and weakness and dominion.

But this new love, the love that Peeta has planted in her and waters with every kiss, nourishes with every tender touch, and shines sunlight on with every genuine "I love you," is simple. It is young, balanced, full of potential, brimming with life, and retains the ability to grow separate of the old weed that Katniss has since torn out.

And so that night, as Peeta traces gentle strokes across her bare skin as he always does, the once-starving Katniss Everdeen begins to drift to a peaceful, warmth-laced sleep, her skinny love finally fed.